


A letter from another time and place (a time-travel fic)

by verybadhedgehog



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Light Side AU, M/M, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, domestic benarmie, like literally an alternate universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-05-18 22:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verybadhedgehog/pseuds/verybadhedgehog
Summary: Ben Solo is living his slightly unconventional life as a Jedi and part-time racing pilot when a bundle of mysterious documents changes everything. There is an impossible secret. None of his relationships are untouched by it. Knowledge can be a blessing, a curse, or both.





	1. Chapter 1

Ben Solo sat back in the cockpit of his ship and reviewed his flight plan.

He had just been asked to call in to a space station adjoining the Gerantine Debris Field to check on reports of suspicious neo-Imperial activity. His colleague, Jedi Master Kellik, would owe him a favour for this. Ben partly hoped that the reports wouldn’t come to nothing, just so that the detour wouldn’t be a complete waste of his skills.

And then it would be home. To his place, where he could sit back, and relax, and switch off from all of it, challenged only by the neighbours’ noisy presence in the Force.

A call came through on the lines, from his mother’s residence. It wouldn’t be her — he was pretty sure she was working in her Senate office at this time. Staff, or one of the droids. He picked up.

“Master Ben!” It was the household’s veteran protocol and communication droid.

“See-Threepio. Hello. What can I do for you?”

“Master Ben, I have received an important communication for you. From an official from the Corellian bank. He would like to meet with you to discuss a time-sensitive item deposited in the vaults.”

“Okay. I can call him, see what it’s about. Drop by there on the way back if I need to.”

“Oh, if you would. It did seem quite important,” C-3PO said, with characteristic pride in his own fussiness.

Ben got the comm address from the droid, and called the bank — a short, businesslike conversation that didn’t tell him anything new. There was something in the vaults, in his name, and the official was quite keen that he should come and unseal it. Just the sort of thing that would make Threepio’s circuits fluster. Ben thought it quite possible that persons unknown could be presenting information to him, using a bank deposit box as a dead drop. It might have something to bear on his Jedi missions. Or it could be someone with links to a rival racing team leaking technical information about their new ship. Mind you, if that were the case, there were better and easier ways of getting a whisper into the ear of either Ben or Han Solo.

 

***

 

The mission to the Gerantine space station turned out to be something and nothing.

Ben met with his contact, and had them lay out their problem for him. Discrepancies in the weigh-in takings of materials from the debris field. Resources possibly being siphoned off to Imperialists. A small number of people who might have neo-Imperial sympathies. Ben was to spy on them, and use his gifts and powers to get a reading on the situation. It _was_ a mundane task — acting as no more than a glorified bug droid, really. Not what he was born and trained to do. Resentment was an empty and fruitless feeling, he knew and had been told. But whatever.

And so there was an eavesdrop in a public restaurant on the space station main concourse.Ben took a seat in a booth near a human woman dressed in neat dark blue who he was fairly sure from her feeling in the Force was an outsider here to meet someone for illicit gain.

The other target beings, a human man and a short Abednedo in workers’ overalls, arrived, showing the kind of anxious shiftiness common to most low-to-middle ranks in an illegal enterprise. Most cons were more or less the same job when you got down to it. It hadn’t been Jedi training that had taught Ben that.

“No problem getting here?” the man asked.

“No.”

“Good. I mean, not, you know —” and he dropped his voice to a whisper —“ _followed_.”

Ben stopped himself from showing his amusement.

“No,” the woman said, casually. “You?”

“No, no.”

“The goods?”

“All in the loading bay,” the Abednedo said. “And the credits?”

“Half now, like we said. Once we transfer.”

The Abednedo raised a wrist comm to his mouth and spoke into it. He nodded as he got an answer, and then there was a shifting about of arms and bags, which must have been the handover of money.

“All good. See.”

The man nodded and seemed relieved.

“We’ll only have to worry if they send a Jedi,” whispered the Abednedo in his own language, barely audible.

Ben bit the inside of his lip to stop himself from reacting. It went to show, though, that they were clearly only expecting a Jedi to wear the sort of simple old fashioned dress that people associated with them. (On this trip, Ben had been a little conscious of the risk of being recognised as galactic time-trial championship sports pilot Ben Solo, but it seemed he had no cause for concern. This itself irked him slightly, but it was better than the alternative.)

His analysis was that the two space station suspects seemed to be in it purely for the money, with no real sympathy for neo-Imperialism. The woman in dark blue, though, was definitely a neo-Imperialist. He sensed anticipation from her — profit on the goods — and the belief in a cause,to which that profit would be donated. Ben followed her a little way out, and used the Force to distract her while he pinned a tracker to her coat. Master Kellik and his New Republic military friends would take things from there.

Job done, he checked the time. If he ran the hyperdrive at 90% he’d get to Corellia in time to make a meeting with this bank official. He’d find out what it was all about, stop by a takeout restaurant to get dinner, and get back home. Not so bad.

 

***

 

Ben parked at the main Coronet City port and took a speeder cab to the bank. The route from the port to the business district had been cleaned up and dressed up with new residential developments and fancy semi-aquatic parks. Regeneration, they called it. The old rough Northside Coronet City still showed through in places.

At the bank, a charming young man at reception took his name, and directed him to a comfortable seat where he sat and waited. He tuned himself to the buzz of beings and consciousnesses around him. It was a trick to stave off boredom, and it didn’t really work. The well dressed Gossam lady sitting nearby gave off a sense of optimism about something. A Devaronian in dark green overalls and mag-boots was hiding worry and agitation. Nobody liked to wait. The Force also showed him the busy, methodical, nature of the bankers’ work on the lower customer-facing floors, and he found that a little more soothing.

A short-bearded Cerean man in a neat tailored suit and half-robe approached, and extended a hand in greeting.

“Mr Solo?”

“Yes. That’s me.” Ben stood up and shook the man’s hand.

“Gedi Andek,” the man said. “Private vault manager. We spoke over the radio — pleased to meet you.”

“I still have little idea what this is about,” Ben said.

“Come with me.”

Ben followed, and they took an elevator to the third sub-ground floor.

The manager keyed a code into a pad, and a massive durasteel vault door opened with a clunk and a whirr of hidden motors. The walls of the vault were lined with deposit boxes, some only as big as a flight helmet, others with doors a metre square.

Mr Andek led him through and stopped a few metres inside. “Here we are. Number 409. It’s bio-locked, sir, as well as time-locked, so if you would…”

He had never been to this vault before. Had never been to this branch of the bank. Had never hired a deposit box. So how could the box be bio-locked to him?

He placed his palm on the reader anyway.

Clicks and shunts came from the door mechanism. The box was unlocking.

The manager pulled the door open. Inside sat a datapad, two data chips linked together on a cord, and an envelope. Ben picked up the envelope first. It was made of paper, with his name inked on it in a deliberately plain, printed style of hand.

“You honestly don’t know anything more about this?”

The manager shook his domed head. “No, Mr Solo. I told you as much information as I have. The box was sealed and time-locked to be opened on or after this date, by you.”

“And you don’t know who left these things here, and the instructions? I mean—” and he held up his hand—” the bio-lock would suggest it was me, but it wasn’t.”

“I can double check the records in my office.”

Mr Andek led Ben back out of the vault, and escorted him to an office. Ben clutched the datapad and envelope, and kept glancing at them. They weren’t in the least familiar. The datapad was a model he didn’t know at all.

He took a seat, and Mr Andek tapped at his console.

“Hmm. I’m sorry to say, Mr Solo, but the identifying information of the depositor has been redacted.”

“Well, shit.”

“I’m awfully sorry. The attached note is the exact same information I read out to you on our first call. And the date of the deposit is day 12, month 8, 5 ABY.”

“Say again?’

“Day 12. Month 8. 5 ABY.”

Ben looked Mr Andek in the eyes and saw a straightforward, honest-seeming man, with nothing about his presence in the Force to suggest otherwise. He glanced down at the documents in his hand again. “Perhaps the answer is in the documents themselves.”

“Perhaps it is,” Mr Andek said.

Ben stood up. “Well, thank you very much for your help, anyway.” He tucked the envelope, datapad and chips into an inside jacket pocket, and zipped up the pocket.

A handshake goodbye at the reception desk, and that was it.

He stopped for a quick press of caf in a shop just by the bank. Hopefully, nobody would see him and start asking about his father. Questions about Han Solo usually ended up being questions about Han Solo and money.

Ben pulled the envelope from his pocket and slid it open. A sheet of paper inside, folded over, a collection of symbols jotted in the corner, and his name written on in hand. In _his_ hand. It was unmistakably his own handwriting. This could be a coincidence. It _had_ to be a coincidence.

He opened the paper. _Ben. Be alone when you read this, and the document on the datapad._ He folded the paper back up. If it had to be said at all, it must be said for a good reason. The paper went back into the envelope and the envelope back into his pocket. He finished his caf, left a small tip, and stepped out onto the busy street. He held out his hand to hail a cab, sending out intention with the Force to go along with it. He needed to get back to the port and onto his ship as soon as possible. 

Ben paid the cab and walked, then jogged, then ran to his ship.

Doors sealed, he sat in the tiny lounge area behind the cockpit, and opened the envelope again.

_Be alone when you read this, and the document on the datapad. This will be impossible to explain, perhaps, but I have to try. You aren’t stupid, I know that. There are a few things you need to know, to make this work. It’s on the datapad. The holos on the chips will tell you much the same._

_I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I hope it finds you at all._

_The code to the datapad is 21Xf-RP48-5jWB_

He took the datapad in his hands and entered the code. The screen opened to more handwritten text, quickly scrawled with a stylus by the look of it. His writing, still his writing, all his writing.

_Firstly, do you already have dealings with an Armitage Hux? If so, good. If not, seek him out. You must seek him out. He may go by another name - his mother’s name was Rialle Dasnett and he spent at least some of his childhood on Yabol Opa._

Yes. He had gone by Armitage Dasnett for a while, before deciding to reclaim his name from his absent father. And Yabol Opa was where he had grown up, and gone to school, and where Rialle Dasnett still lived and worked as an administrator.

_You can be happy together. It’s important. So important. I don’t care how you do it. You’ll find a way, or he’ll find a way._

They were pretty happy together, and had been so for a while. Initially they’d got off on the wrong foot. Armitage’s employer had been the main sponsor for Solo Racing for a season, and on his first visit to a race event he had been distinctly unimpressed by the attitude of lead pilot (and team boss’s son). But soon he’d started showing up at races that his company hadn’t needed him to be at, and one thing had led to another. Whatever way they’d needed to find, they’d already found it.

_I trust you’ve been successful in some way, but that isn’t as important. Make use of your powers. Maybe you’re a Jedi now. It won’t have gone wrong like it did for me._

_Something terrible happened. A lot of terrible things happened, and this is the only way I can put things right._

_Watch the holo on the black data chip._

He put the chip into his holoprojector, his hands shaking slightly. The image beamed out and resolved itself. He saw what he couldn’t believe, obscene in its impossibility — his own face.

The holo-him looked out from the projection, gazing into the camera, gazing into Ben’s eyes without really catching them. Waiting, Ben supposed, for him to get a grip on himself.

The him in the image _was_ him. Perhaps a couple of years older. Hair a few centimetres longer, maybe. A prominent scar across his face. He looked serious, and there was something terribly sad about him, too.

“Hello, Ben.”

It was his own voice. Of course it was.

“Hello,” he whispered. “You gonna tell me what the fuck this is?”

“I’m you. I’m what you could have been. But I’ve put it right. I need you to know.” The holo figure pushed his hair out of his face and sighed. “I had a lot of power, and I have to give it up to do this. Something came up that was more important. I had to put things right, and make it okay. For you. It _is_ okay for you, isn’t it.”

“It is. Not perfect, but okay.”

“Please find Armitage. Or if you already have, please be good to him. I love him so much. You love him so much. You do.”

“I do,” Ben whispered.

The holo-him continued. “I made mistakes,” he said, bitterly. “I hurt him. Before it even started, not while we’ve been together. But I couldn’t make it go away. And I need to. I want to be a person who’s never hurt him. And you are.

“And I want to — so much that’s happened in my life, I want it to be gone. What happened with my father, all of it. One thing I know was right — I killed my master.” The holo shook his head. “Not Luke, another master. But I should have done it earlier. Much earlier. It took me a while to realise what ‘kill the past’ really means. So that’s what I’m doing. There are abilities and possibilities. It’s in the letter. Some parts of the letter will be hard to read.” His voice cracked on this, and his face trembled.

Ben went back to the datapad. His fingers shook.

A section later on in the letter told him a little more about the abilities and possibilities, at least.

_I have tried and given everything to cut the past off, to make it die. And nothing has been enough until now. Finally I know what I have to do. I know what it means to kill the past. I have to kill it face to face. Where it lives. In the past itself._

_There are abilities that I didn’t know about — to open a portal. You probably don’t know them. Or maybe you do. The Force can extend across time, link time and space together, and give us a pathway to travel on._

_I have stepped into the world between worlds and I have stepped out._

So this other him had, he inferred, gone back in time in order to change the past — or “kill” it, as he had said. That was what the world between worlds was, a place where all of time and space existed simultaneously. Almost impossible to find and access, and even most Force-adepts only related to it in a spiritual sense, not in any practical sense. The other him had gone inside it, and actually _used_ it to go back in time. It seemed impossible, but it was the only thing that made sense. He had gone to the past to face it, and kill it. And this was the result.

The letter told him that Armitage, the “other” Armitage, had recorded a message too, on the grey holo chip with the hexagonal logo.

He ejected the first chip and put the grey one in.

Ben was about to smile at the sight of Armitage’s face, but there was something about him that seemed wrong. His hair was slicked back in a severe, unflattering style and he was wearing all black too — a military jacket with a collar. The letter had referred to him as an “ambitious general,” and this must be what he was.His expression was serious and controlled, and he seemed so very tired. He got tired when work was stressful and a project was nearing important deadlines, but this military Armitage looked so _so_ worn out.

Armitage spoke. His voice was clipped, more correct and old-fashioned than the voice Ben knew. “Ben. I hope you know who I am. If not, you must do as Kylo says and find me. I don’t know where I’ll be. I don’t understand how this can work, but Kylo is very sure. Maybe I’ll simply wake up and be a different person. I just want us to be able to do things properly and get things right.”

“Who knows,” Ben said. “I don’t know what you mean by getting things right.”

This other him, this Kylo, as the other Armitage seemed to know him, had written a lot but had left a lot between the lines. From what he could gather, there had been another Empire of sorts — the Imperial Remnants out in the Unknown Regions had found a being named Snoke, whoever or _whatever_ he was; Snoke had supported them financially and led them, and they’d taken over the galaxy to form a new Empire. And _he_ , this other him, and _Armitage_ , this other Armitage, were at the head of it. He was apprentice to Snoke just as Darth Vader had been apprentice to the old Emperor. And Armitage was a military general, following in his father’s footsteps and wounded by his father’s cruelty.

And the letter was signed. _Kylo Ren / Ben Solo._

It was too much to take in, with his heart breaking inside him.

At the end of the letter was the hardest part to read, with the worst news of all. His father. He, this other him who looked and spoke just like him, who _was_ him, had killed his own father. His first and best friend.

_Snoke presented it as a test. I took it._

His hands numbed and his head pounded. He had to call Han, just to hear his voice. Just to know his dad was okay, that nothing had happened to him, that reading this letter hadn’t brought its words into being.

He had to talk to Armitage about this, too. And he had, though the thought terrified him, to talk to Luke, and to his mother. And he’d need to read the letters and see the holos again. When he got home.

It was all he could do to make a last check of his coordinate path and engage the hyperdrive. Light smeared across the viewport, and he sat back in his seat.

Getting back home was a matter of autopilot and routine. Present and not present in his body, going through the necessary motions, the movements of hands and ship and landing and power down.

He locked up at the private garaging zone, and walked, body numb and a corner of his mind still nothing but frantic, to the apartment block. In through the first security door, into the cool air inside, the elevator, the quiet landing and corridor, the front door.

The vibrant pink of the feature wall in the entrance hall greeted him. The apartment was quiet. Air conditioning and kitchen appliances hummed gently. The droid wasn’t there, which was an obvious relief. It would be down in the laundry room, most likely. He then realised that he hadn’t brought back the food he’d promised. Shit. The droid would be cooking after all, getting in the way. But first, the letter.

The envelope was in his pocket, which he unzipped, hurriedly, and found a quiet corner in the living room.

He sat on the floor, his back against an arm of the pale blue-grey sofa, and read the letter again. The words were becoming familiar — almost as familiar as the hand they were written in. 

He reached the part about his father.

_I want my Dad back. Snoke had me kill him. I did it. Snoke presented it as a test. I took it. And failed. Snoke taunted me about it, for showing emotion about it. He didn’t live for long after that, but it was too long._

_Mom is gone and it’s too late. It’s always been too late._

He could feel the anguish in the words, even more than he had done when reading in his ship. In the holo, the other him had been visibly upset when he referred to the part of the letter than would be hard to read. This was what had broken him, surely. And to read that this Snoke had even taunted him about the killing, berating him for being upset about it?

How could he have done it? How could he have let himself be lied to like this?

He thought of Darth Vader, _poor Darth Vader,_ and how mom and Luke had — eventually — told him the story, and how Luke had told it again, quietly, with more detail. He remembered the look on his uncle’s face as he’d talked about how Vader had first hesitated and then committed to saving him, throwing the Emperor down the shaft.

Luke and his father had saved each other. But for this other him, this Kylo, the story hadn’t worked. Nobody had been saved. He had done his worst by trusting in his master and not turning against him in time. When Luke had told him the story of Vader’s end, Ben had been shocked and disgusted by the idea that the Emperor had kept Vader and used him. Like a slave or an animal. Ben had thought that of course he’d never let himself be used like poor Darth Vader. He’d be wise. He’d know the Emperor’s tricks. But he _had_ let himself be used. This other him seemingly hadn’t been able to resist.

And mom was gone, the letter said. He’d lost her too, in this other world. It seemed like he’d wanted to reconcile with her. But too late. 

Ben cried. He wept and wept, and didn’t know if he was crying for his grandfather, for his father, his mother, or for himself.

 

***

 

Emerging slowly from his emotions, he sat and breathed, letting his last tears make salt on the back of his throat as he leant back against the sofa. He looked around the room, taking it in, letting himself feel present in it again. He’d have to get up and do a few things before Armitage got back. He’d have to decide what to do about dinner. He wouldn’t have the droid cook — he’d rather it just be him and Armitage, if they were going to have to talk about this.

The door to the apartment opened — a familiar click and slide. Not Armitage though, yet, but the droid.

L-4SA was towing two trundle baskets of clean folded laundry.

“Good afternoon Master Ben.”

“Ell-Four.”

“I shall be putting away these clothes and towels. If you need me for anything else, just summon me.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I shall be back to take care of washing up after your dinner, at ten.”

“Alright.”

The droid looked at him. “Is everything alright, Master Ben?

“Everything’s fine,” Ben said with as much assurance as he could muster, and a little intention with the Force. It wasn’t fine. He hadn’t called his father and maybe he should now, but there was a lot to do now if he was going to be ready for Armitage to get home. And the whole idea of calling Han seemed silly now. Nothing would have happened. He’d have to do it later or tomorrow or something,

The droid made its way towards the bedroom to put away a stack of Armitage’s fine-knits. “Very good, sir.”

Ben puffed out his cheeks in a sigh. He could, if he wanted to, try to hide the whole thing from Armitage, with some intention with the Force, although it would never be so easy to fool him as it was to fool the droid. Assuming the droid even was fooled, and not merely polite.

He slid the datapad and paper back into the envelope and dropped the two data chips back after them. The package went back into his pocket and sat over his chest. He zipped it up, and went into the kitchen to quickly wash his face in cold water. He could hide his tears, and get to the difficult conversation when he got to it.

 

***

 

A light blinked on on the control panel set into the lounge table, indicating that a speeder had parked in their parking space in the basement garage. Armitage was home. Ben waited for him to come up. A short walk to the elevator. A short wait. Twenty seconds to go up. Then down the corridor.

The door clicked and slid open.

“Hey.”

“Oh, hey. You’re home.”

“Yeah. Just got back.”

A conversation was going to have to be had, but there was no clear way to proceed into it. He followed Armitage into the kitchen.

“How were things?”

“Fine.” The letter and the other him and the other Armitage crowded cold and heavy in his mind. And the mundane problem, the immediate problem of not getting take out dinner, sat there too, in the way of everything. “I had to go to the bank. The central bank in Coronet City.”

“For money?” Money was not normally a problem, and Armitage knew it.

“No. Not for money. I had to go pick up from a deposit box.”

Armitage took a drinking glass from a shelf. Ben listened to the faucet open, flow, fill, and close and said the next part as Armitage drank his water. “Thing is, though, I didn’t know anything about any deposit box. So. I go to the bank, and speak to the private vault manager, he takes me down into the vaults; there’s this deposit box, I open it,” he said, leaving out the part where the box was bio-locked to his fingerprints, “and, uh, there were some documents inside and—“

“— And was there bad news in these documents?”

“It was news, alright.” He was already saying more than he’d planned to.

Armitage put his empty glass down. “Right. Is it your Jedi business?”

“It’s… it’s complicated.”

“Ah. Well. What isn’t.”

“You know I was gonna pick you up dinner from that place you like but this came up and…”

“It’s alright. I can call L-4SA back to make dinner.”

“No. It’s okay,” Ben said, really not wanting the droid back. “We’ll, uh, put something together.” He opened the conservator and saw what it had to offer. “There are some Mundarian potatoes left over and a bunch of spigage. Carrots. And some other bits and pieces. I don’t know.”

“There’s still a box meal or two?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s have a box meal. You can make something to go with if you like. I’m hungry.”

This Ben could do, almost on autopilot. He’d get Armitage fed, make up for not bringing back the dinner as promised. At least there’d be that. “I can do hot spigage and potato hash. Won’t take long. Sorry I didn’t bring you take out. Just this… you know, things come up.”

Potatoes. Potato peeler. Knife. Cutting board. He felt detached and poorly-fitting in the space his living Force energy carved out for him. Seeing potato peelings pile up on the cutting board, unable to keep from thinking of how another life had been lived and then un-lived, erased except for a few traces.

He’d peeled one potato a little too much on one side. It wouldn’t be noticed. He cut them up, and tipped them into a pot with nut oil and spice from a jar. He stirred them — by intention, no need to dirty a spoon.

Armitage took the box meal out of its box and set in in the reheating unit. “You know I can live on these for weeks,” he said.

Ben threw the spigage leaves into his pot and set a lid on top. It ought to be done in five or six minutes.

“Funny, actually. I have to go to Corellia next week,” Armitage said over the hum of the reheater.

“Oh?”

“It’s to interview this guy. We want to hire him but he can’t take a day off to come here and see me in the office without his boss smelling a rat. So I’m going over there to see him.”

“Uh huh. You must really want to hire him,” Ben said, still facing his cooking pot, trying hard to sound normal.

“Oh yes. He’s a shipbuilder _and_ qualified space architect, really good on structural stuff, variable gravitation, too. So, yeah. All the way over to Corellia to grab forty minutes and a soup and a sandwich, see if he’s as good as his datafile says and report back.”

“Flying visits to Corellia, hey. Seems to be what we’re doing these days.”

He could sense Armitage looking at him. Wondering what was wrong. What the bad, complicated news might be.

The reheater beeped, and they dished up onto rectangular glass plates, the rust-red and brown of boxed meatballs accompanied by bluish-green and yellow tinged potatoes.

“And wine? We could both do with it. It’ll be Visendri rosé from the box, mind you.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Armitage lifted the box from the conservator and dosed wine into two tumblers.

They ate. Armitage was hungry, and ate quickly. Ben ate without taking much of either pleasure or displeasure. Another him, who had existed at one point, would have sat at a table and eaten food. Somewhere on a far away Star Destroyer perhaps, the other him and the other Armitage would have eaten military grub. Probably like the stuff out of the box that Armitage could live on for weeks. Or years.

The thoughts made him sad again, a sort of distant sadness for two men who had never existed. 

Armitage took the dirty plates back to the kitchen and topped up his wine. He sat on the couch, his posture inviting Ben to come and sit beside him.

He sat, more than usually aware of how the couch felt to sit on. How the table in front of him looked — a worn patch on one corner of the wood where it joined the square chromed frame. It wouldn’t be bearable to sit and not say anything. He’d already said too much to be able to say nothing.

“Look. I have to, um, tell you about these. The documents from the deposit box.” Ben pulled the envelope out of his pocket. “These,” he said. And there slid out onto the table the datapad, the two data chips and the paper.

“Right. So what’s on them? Have you looked?”

“Yes, I’ve looked.”

The paper caught Armitage’s eye. “Is that notes you’ve made?”

“No. It’s a letter.”

“On paper? Who are you writing to on paper?”

Ben shook his head. “I’m not. Yes, it’s my handwriting. But I didn’t write that.”

Armitage gave him a predictably puzzled and suspicious look.

Ben sighed. “I can’t even start to explain. I can’t make it make sense. I meditated on it but it’s all too difficult.” Meditated on it. Better than the truth. He carried on, too far in it to stop. “This letter, it starts on paper but it’s mainly on the datapad. It’s addressed to me. And it tells a story. Not very well, though. Fuck, _I’m_ not telling this story very well.”

“It’s alright. I mean, carry on.”

“So, this letter,” Ben said. “That’s addressed to me. It’s odd that any of it’s on paper in the first place. Don’t you think? And these symbols. I don’t even recognise all of them.”

“Right.”

“And the datapad, it’s kind of odd looking, right? Do you even recognise the model?”

Armitage reached towards the datapad, his expression asking permission. Ben nodded, and Armitage picked up the pad. “No, I don’t,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “Kessen Tech only made, like, eight different models. I’m sure. Could be a knock off but why would you make a fake model 5 that doesn’t look anything like a model 5?”

“Yep. You see it.”

“So, uh, you’ve read what’s on there?”

“I have.” Ben took the datapad back. “Ah, this is hard. It’s hard, and it’s strange, and you won’t like it — I don’t like it.” He picked up the paper and unfolded it, placing it between his lap and Armitage’s, so Armitage could read it with him. He took a sip of his wine.

_Ben. Be alone when you read this._

_This will be impossible to explain, perhaps, but I have to try. You aren’t stupid, I know that._

_There are a few things you need to know, to make this work. It’s on the datapad. The holos on the chips will tell you much the same._

_I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I hope it finds you at all._

_The code to the datapad is 21Xf-RP48-5jWB_

“Well, that’s certainly very odd,” Armitage said, and pushed his hair away from his face.

“It is.”

“It does say be alone when you read it — is it alright for you to be sharing it with me?”

“Yes. I think so. It doesn’t say not to. It’s more saying not to read it for the first time in public, in front of people.”

“Okay, right.”

“It gets — it was upsetting in places.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I have to talk to my uncle about this. I’d rather not, but.” He stopped and gazed off into the corner of the room for a few seconds. “Look, I’ve got to just — the letter. It’s about us. Mainly about me. But about you too.”

“About us?”

“Okay. Let me read this out.” Ben picked up the datapad. He took a breath and began.

_“Firstly, do you already have dealings with an Armitage Hux? If so, good. If not, seek him out. You must seek him out. He may go by another name - his mother’s name was Rialle Dasnett and he spent at least some of his childhood on Yabol Opa.”_

Armitage looked at him, eyes a little wide. “Okay…”

Ben had started, so he’d continue. He sucked on the inside of his cheek, swallowed, and carried on.

_“You can be happy together. It’s important. So important. I don’t care how you do it. You’ll find a way, or he’ll find a way. I trust you’ve been successful in some way, but that isn’t as important. Make use of your powers. Maybe you’re a Jedi now. It won’t have gone wrong like it did for me. Something terrible happened. A lot of terrible things happened, and this is the only way I can put things right. Watch the holo on the black data chip.”_

“This is — who is this from?”

“It’s from me. But it’s not.”

“How can that — that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. I can’t make it make sense.” He closed his eyes and tried to push and reach out in the Force for something, something he could grasp on to to make any of this easier. “I’m gonna have to show you the holorecordings.”

“Holorecordings.”

Ben summoned the holoprojector to him with an outstretched hand. He slipped in the first chip.

“Let me warn you. This is going to be very strange.”

He took a breath and pressed play. The other him appeared again, and said its greeting.

_“I’m you. I’m what you could have been. But I’ve put it right. I need you to know. I had a lot of power, and I have to give it up to do this. Something came up that was more important. I had to put things right, and make it okay. For you. It is okay for you, isn’t it.”_

Ben was extremely aware of Armitage’s every reaction. Chills. Shallow breath.

_“Please find Armitage. Or if you already have, please be good to him. I love him so much. You love him so much. You do.”_

Beside him, Armitage gasped.

_“I made mistakes. I hurt him. Before it even started, not while we’ve been together. But I couldn’t make it go away. And I need to. I want to be a person who’s never hurt him. And you are. And I want to — so much that’s happened in my life, I want it to be gone. What happened with my father, all of it.”_

Ben paused the holo.

“Fucking hell.”

“I did warn you.”

“That _isn’t_ just you, is it? With a made up face? This isn’t some sort of prank.”

“No. You can check with the bank. It’s all been locked in a safe box for thirty years.”

“Fucking _hell_. So what is this, then? Is this your magic?”

Ben shook his head.

“What _is_ he?”

“He’s another me.”

“Another you.”

“Yes. Another me, in another time and place. That’s why — the writing, and everything. The letter is to me, from me.”

Armitage sat and shook his head. “I’m not going to be able to understand this,” he said. He leant forward and inspected the paused hologram.

“There he is,” Ben said with a helpless shrug. “Another me. It’s me, but it’s not.”

“There he is. You, but not.” He squinted at the holo. “Damn. His face. That scar.”

“A lightsaber duel. I’m pretty sure, from what the letter says.” Kylo’s words from the letter were in Ben’s mind. _The scavenger girl who gave me the scar on my face, she had just refused and scorned my offer to rule with me, and I can’t explain. I can’t explain._

“He wasn’t as lucky as you, then,” Armitage said, and sipped at his wine.

Ben said nothing to that, though it almost certainly hadn’t been meant as a slight.

“He looks so — well, really, he looks sad,” Armitage said. “Fierce, but sad.”

“Yes. He does. The letter, too — it’s like that.”

Ben knew what Armitage wasn’t asking. The question was there, hanging, challenging him. _What does it mean that the other you hurt me_. It wouldn’t stay unasked forever, he knew, and he had no answer.

“The letter. It carries on, from after I’m supposed to have watched the holo.”

“Okay.”

_So, that proves it._

_I was apprentice to someone very powerful, who was helping us to lead and rule. But he lied. He was cruel to me and made a fool out of me. So I killed him, but wished I’d done so long before. His name was Snoke. I don’t know if this will mean anything to you or anyone, but I have to call him by name._

_I wanted to be like Lord Vader. Snoke wanted to be another Emperor. And so I did as Darth Vader did, and I destroyed him. Took his throne, the power, everything._

_We had a lot of success, but it isn’t what it was supposed to be._

“Hells,” Armitage said.

_I always hated Armitage Hux, for the longest time. And he loathed me, I know it. Then we became close somehow and I’ve never needed or loved anyone so much._

He turned to Armitage, and the tears were in his eyes again.

“Oh, Ben.”

Armitage folded his arms around him.

“He loved you,” Ben mumbled. “The other me. He loved you.”

“It’s alright.”

“I don’t want to be like Vader. I don’t want to have to go through all that again. We’d got through that.” The withholding and the lies and the explanations and the _concern_ and the whole Chosen One fucking _thing_ and Luke’s worries and his _mother_.

Armitage held him, and stroked his back and hair, and that at least felt right. Maybe it was getting easier.

“Hey,” Armitage said, pulling out of the embrace. “I’m going to get some more wine. You want any? Water?”

“Oh, why not. Get me more of the pink stuff,” Ben said.

“I think this is that kind of day, really,” Armitage said from the kitchen, fiddling with the wine box and its spigot.

He came back with the drinks and sat back down. “So was there another _me_? I can’t believe I’m asking this.”

“Yes. There was.”

“Okay. What do we know about him?”

“He was military. In this new empire.”

“Oh. Military. Right.”

“There was a holo of him — of you — too,” Ben said.

“Oh. Well. Go on, put it on,” Armitage said, nervous and brave.

Ben switched the data chips. Armitage held his breath. The face appeared, hair slicked back, severe.

“Oh gosh. That’s — oh that’s me. Fuck.”

The holo spoke.

_“Ben. I hope you know who I am. If not, you must do as Kylo says and find me. I don’t know where I’ll be. I don’t understand how this can work, but Kylo is very sure.”_

“Oh gosh. Kylo — that’s the other you, I suppose?”

“Yes. He changed his name. I think.”

Armitage stared at his own face. “It’s — I can’t describe it.” He shook his head. “Fucking hell. I don’t like it. I’ll tell you that much.”

“No.”

“It was one thing seeing you, but seeing me?” Armitage sucked in a breath and let it out. Ben could sense his heightened tension, vibrating wildly in the Force.

“It’s not easy.”

“He looks so tired. And, I mean, look at that uniform. He’s —”

“I know.”

“The old Imperials made a new Empire. Ben, I’m thinking it through and I just don’t like it. I look like — hell, I look a little like my father.”

“They’re both what we would have been.”

“He’s — I don’t think I like him much. I’m not like that am I?”

“You’re not.”

Armitage stared some more. “Look at him. Look at the size of those shoulder pads. I don’t know, is it right to laugh? I don’t think it’s funny, at all, I just — I don’t know what to think.” He glanced at Ben nervously, then back at the holo. “And all that stuff in his hair.”

“I think you look better the way you are.”

“I’m glad you do.” He shook his head again. “The way he sounded, too. I thought I spoke that way — that’s what people say, at least — but I must have lost a lot of the accent.”

It had affected Armitage the same way it had affected Ben. The sight of their other selves was jarring in itself. And the differences between the people in those holos, and the reality they knew, was very uncomfortable. There were a lot of unpleasant implications just in the way the other Armitage spoke and carried himself, never mind the neo-Imperial uniform. Or the other Ben’s dispassionate confession of being a second Darth Vader.

Armitage put his glass down and spoke. “Where do these other versions of us come from? I mean, what _are_ they? Are they doppelgängers, out there somewhere? I just look at them and I’m trying to make it fit and — does it say? In the letter does it say?”

“Yes. It does, more or less.”

Armitage exhaled impatiently.

“The other me, he — he went back in time. To change things.”

“Time travel, you’re telling me. Actual time travel.” Armitage looked at him from under his eyebrows.

“Yes.”

“It can’t be possible.” He shook his head. “It just can’t. I know you do impossible things, but that’s — it’s different.”

“He went back, did what he hac to do, and left the messages — all this,” he said, waving a hand at the datapad and letter, “in the bank vault, thirty years ago.”

“Hell.”

“The vault was bio-locked to my handprint.”

Armitage looked down at the datapad, then picked it up. He turned it over in his hand, holding it like it was some sort of detonator. “They never made this. They _never made_ this model.”

“No.”

“And they… never existed,” he said, indicating the paused holo.

“I don’t know,” Ben said.He closed his eyes and breathed a few breaths, grounding himself again, telling himself what he already knew and had to know. He existed now. This all existed now. The Force flowed through all of it, and he could feel it and know it.

“I do know,” he said, “that we’re here now. That’s important. That’s what I’m gonna hold on to.”

“Yeah.” Armitage put the datapad down, again so very gently, and took one last look at the holoprojection before switching the projector off. “It’s a lot to think about.” He glanced at Ben and smiled ruefully. “Sorry. Platitudes. I know.”

“I don’t want to think about it for a bit. Gotta be in the present.”

“Yeah. Ell-Four is coming, isn’t he?”

“Yes. At ten, he said.”

“Right. I’ll take the glasses through at least.” Armitage took the wine tumblers into the kitchen. He always liked to be a little bit helpful. It could come across as interfering, but once you knew him, it was rather endearing.

Would the other Armitage have been like that? Or would he have been careless and offhand with droids? Or permanently interfering in everyone’s duties? Or demanding and thankless? The other him had found him sweet somehow, eventually. No. He couldn’t think of this. Back to the present. The Force was always in the present, always moving through the present, always guiding you.

“I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll join you. Shall I get the droid to make tea?”

“No. But in the morning. And tell him I’ll need my room free and undisturbed until the afternoon.”

 

***

 

The lights were dimming minute by minute, on their preset night/sleep pattern.

“I’m glad we’re us and not them,” Armitage said, curled up towards Ben, his face soft on the pillow.

“Me too.”

“We’re alright, aren’t we? I mean, it’s pretty good.”

“It’s pretty good.” Ben put a hand onto Armitage’s slender back, and Armitage cuddled closer to him.

“We already found each other, if that’s what we were supposed to do.”

“The Force brought us together.” Ben felt a gentle chuckle against his body. “That means it’s important,” he said, with the gentlest of chiding tones.

“I’m glad it did, if that’s what it was.”

The weight of the will of the Force and the will of his other self were heavy around him.

“They wanted this,” Ben said. “What we have.”

“Could they know?”

“I don’t know. They hoped. I hope we _are_ what they wanted. That they wouldn’t be disappointed in us.”

Armitage pulled back a little way, and reached up a hand to Ben’s face. With a delicate touch, he traced a line with his fingertip. Forehead to brow to cheek and down onto Ben’s neck. The line of the scar on that other face of his. The touch was so soft and sweet as to be almost painful.

He leant up and kissed Ben’s cheek, once, twice, then settled his head back on the pillow. Ben was afraid to ask why, what it meant. Kissing him better, he thought, and it seemed almost shameful.

Armitage was breathing deeper now. He’d needed to do that, maybe. He, at least was peaceful.

“Sleep now, petal,” Ben murmured.

He had Armitage close to him, in his arms. That was right. That was as the Force willed it.

 

***

 

He woke, with dawn oozing through the gaps in the shutters. Birds were singing in the trees outside the apartment block.

The other Armitage, the tired, haunted General; he might well have spent his life on starships. He’d not have heard the birds singing at dawn. He’d not have heard them yelling about their loves and their homes.

“He gave you that,” Ben whispered under his breath. “The other me. Maybe he wanted you to have that.”


	2. Chapter 2

There were sounds coming from the kitchen. Cupboards closing, boiling water. The droid was making tea. 

Ben asked it to leave the tea in the kitchen for him to take to Armitage. The droid agreed, and also accepted Ben’s suggestion that it go and hook up to the network afterwards, to download some recipes or contribute a few of its processor cycles to some good cause.

Making tea was something you could perfectly do without a droid. But having one made some sense for the times when he and Armitage were both busy and the apartment needed looking after and meals cooked. At least Ell-Four had things to do in his down time. Armitage liked things to be structured.

Ben slipped into his designated work room, and slid the door half shut. He pulled the desk com link forward, and put in a call to his father. He felt a little stupid, listening to the call waiting beeps until Han answered.

“Hey, son.”

“Hey, Dad.” It was a huge relief just to hear and speak to him even though he knew, he knew that nothing could have happened. He was in this world, the present.

“How you been? Luke still keeping you busy?”

“Yeah. Been travelling the last few days.”

“Uh huh. Top secret business?”

“Kinda. Dropped in on Corellia, briefly.”

“Oh ho. Well I hope nobody was asking after me too loudly.”

“No. It was just a flying visit.”

“Well, kid, this may have to be just a flying call, since I got three pilots out on the Rings of Monassar II timed stages very shortly.”

“Oh, shit, sorry.” Ben had forgotten that the event was on, and not entirely unintentionally, as the Rings of Monassar II was an event in which he was forbidden to take part. The series allowed individual events to pick and choose whether they allowed Force-users to compete as pilots.

“It’s okay, nobody’s due to cross the start line for another, uh, twenty minutes.”

“Right. I just wanted to say hi, really.”

“That’s good. Listen, wish we could have had you out there this weekend. Would be wiping them away.”

“Yeah, well. Me too.”

“I’m sorry, son.”

“Not your issue, so don’t be.”

Han’s tone turned more upbeat with a change of subject. “Hey, you want to come to the after-event party? Up on Monassar II’s third moon? If we’re celebrating it’ll be a do.”

“Yeah, I might.”

“You can bring Armchair. If he’s not too busy.”

“I’ll see how his schedule is. But yeah, I’ll try to drop by if you win.”

“We’ll save room for you.”

“Alright, cheers, Dad. I won’t keep you any longer.”

“See you, Ben. Say hi to Luke if you see him.”

So that was done and he felt better for it. Everything was normal and okay as far as Han was concerned.

Ben came back out and collected two tall mugs of tea from the kitchen.

Armitage received the tea, sitting up in bed, and took a sip.

Ben noted his expression. “Still hot enough?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. What took you?”

“I called my dad. Just quickly.”

“Oh, okay. Not about the thing?”

“No. No. Kind of because of the thing, though.” Ben looked out of the window at the early summer morning. The sun was painting the tops of the trees in brighter greens. “Just wanted to say hi. To feel things were right.”

“And are they?”

“Yeah.” Ben smiled, feeling a shaky relief settle into him. “They are.” He turned back to Armitage. “Things are right,” he said, and leant down to kiss his cheek.

“You know I’m going to ask about this,” Armitage said, part way through his tea. “The time travel.”

“I know,” Ben said. “I don’t understand it completely myself.”

“It can’t be possible,” Armitage said, certain, proclaiming. “It doesn’t work with the laws of the universe — not even with magic, surely?”

“It’s happened before, but not like this. Not changing things like this.”

Armitage gave this a long thoughtful squint.

“I have to talk to Uncle Luke about it and, you know, do some research. Maybe go and look at some of his books.”

Armitage squinted harder. “It’s the changing things that I have the problem with. But then, that datapad… Though I suppose it wouldn’t be _that_ hard to fake.”

“And the holo of you? Come on.”

Armitage sighed. “Yes, that holo. But I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, I _really_ don’t think it’s possible. Even though I’ve seen it.”

“Look, I’ll get the datapad and remind myself exactly what it said.”

“Alright. Go on.”

Ben fetched the datapad from the living room and sat on the edge of the bed, on Armitage’s side. The mattress gave a little beneath him.

“Oh. Yeah. This is the why as well as the how. I, uh — it’s this.” He read out. _“I want there to be somewhere we can go where we can be just Ben and Armitage, but there is nowhere in this galaxy. It simply doesn’t exist. There is nowhere we can go where the past isn’t with us. Where I’m not who I am.”_

“Oh,” Armitage said. “Now I know what you were saying last night. They wanted what we have.” He sat forward and put his arms around Ben.

“I want what we have,” Ben said.

“So do I. So do I, angel.”

It seemed more right again. 

“Shall I read the next bit?”

“Yeah, do.”

Ben reached for the datapad. “This is what it says.” He carried on reading where he’d left off.

_“I have tried and given everything to cut the past off, to make it die. And nothing has been enough until now. Finally I know what I have to do. I know what it means to kill the past. I have to kill it face to face. Where it lives. In the past itself._

_There are abilities that I didn’t know about — to open a portal. You probably don’t know them. Or maybe you do. The Force can extend across time, link time and space together, and give us a pathway to travel on._

_I have stepped into the world between worlds and I have stepped out.”_

“Wow,” Armitage said. “A portal? He actually calls it a portal.”

“Well, yeah.”

“And ‘the world between worlds’ — what’s that about? What are we looking at here?”

“The world between worlds,” Ben said, “ is a place where all of space and time are united. If you enter in there, and find the right place, then you’re in another part of time.”

Armitage rubbed his fingertips over his brow. “Okay. It’s a mechanism. I mean, very vaguely, but it’s a mechanism. So. We accept, just for the moment, that a version of you went back in time?”

“He went to thirty years ago, to put these documents in the vault. So — when I was just a baby.”

“And I would have been — well, that’s the fall of the empire. When we were besieged. We managed to get out, obviously, Mama and me.” Armitage cradled his cup against his chest, though he was no longer drinking from it. “But that other me looked like — he looked like his father’s son.”

All Ben really concretely knew of Armitage’s father was that he had been an Imperial officer, responsible for one of the Empire’s military academies. Armitage didn’t discuss him much, and Ben had certainly inferred a little from that. And in the letter there were open references to horrible cruelty that had wounded the other Armitage deeply, maybe irreparably. _I see the wound in him and I can’t fix it. I can’t bear it. I didn’t know, until he let me look, just how appallingly cruel his father was._

“Ben,” Armitage said, uncertain but serious, “That wasn't anything to do with you? With this other you. Getting me and mama out, I mean.”

“No,” Ben said, and chased his lie with a large gulp of tea. It had gone almost cold. He grimaced.

“Ah.” Armitage sounded relieved. “There was a lot going on in those end of empire days. Arrangements being made. I've never known why mama and I were saved. My best theory’s always been that someone wanted the droid and we were cover.”

Ben nodded. “A lot going on. Talk to my mother about it,” he said, with a dry laugh. “She thrived on it, of course. Crisis and rush and pressure and all that.”

“Nobody ever came back for the droid. Not the man who took us on a ship or anyone else. Something must have happened to him.”

Ben did not want the conversation to go much further in the direction of the man who had taken them on the ship. And certainly not to what might have become of him.

“I’m very glad I didn’t grow up with my father,” Armitage said. “Whether or not it had anything to do with the other you and whatever he changed. Hearing from him is bad enough. His little messages sent through whatever intermediaries.”

Ben knew the story. Armitage clutched his mug of tea a little tighter. “Poor sods doing as they were told. Passing on these rambling fucking bits of bullshit.”

Ben reached out, about to rest a hand on Armitage’s knee, but Armitage sprang out of bed, putting his mug down on the side table with a heavy, startling clunk.

“Insults and self aggrandisement and just all _bullshit_ ,” he said, pacing now. “About how I was wasting my potential with Mama — and the things he’d say about _her_ , kriff, I was just a kid reading that. Can’t imagine what he was thinking. Probably drunk. ‘A useless little scrap you were, from a useless wench,’ I still remember that.”

“I know. It's been a while since you heard from him, though?”

“Been years. Can only hope he’s dead. Awful to say, isn’t it? But look, I know what Mama says about him, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry for getting on to all this. On top of your stuff. I don’t like talking about him. It’s just. That holo. That other me. That was Brendol Hux’s son, and much the worse for it.”

Ben stood. “It's alright. You’re not like that. Hey, come here.”

Armitage let Ben hold him.

“What time do you have to be going?” Ben asked, feeling Armitage coast to calm in his arms.

“Soon. I’d best get dressed.”

Ben watched him put on his work clothes, fascinated almost anew by his neat, sharp, style.

_Somewhere we can go where we can be just Ben and Armitage._

“I’m going to meditate, I think, and then I have to speak to Luke. Which is going to be tough.”

“You’ll be alright,” Armitage said, fastening his trousers at the side. “I mean, this is all his wheelhouse, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But the Dark side stuff. It’s not going to be welcome.”

Armitage straightened his collar in the mirror.

“I think I’m going to go see him face to face, at the temple,” Ben said.

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll let you know what I’m doing if I do go.”

“I should be done on site by the end of the day.”

“Are you taking your speeder?”

“No, I’m taking the hovertrain. I’ll walk to the station. It’s nice today.”

“How’s it driving, your speeder? Still struggling?”

“A little.”

“I’ll download some diagnostics and take a look. If I have time.” He felt like he was doing something worthwhile. Being a good boyfriend. “You’ll be alright too? With everything?”

“Yeah,” Armitage said. “I’m not going to have time to think about it today. Non-stop meetings and site inspections.”

Ben dressed quickly, in grey leggings and pale wrap shirts, and collected what he thought he’d need to check up on the speeder. Armitage was waiting by the door. He hurried, and they walked together down to the ground floor.

Ben kissed Armitage goodbye, then continued down to the basement garaging and made his way to Armitage’s speeder. From his pocket, he pulled a data pack and cable from his pocket. Leaning into the speeder’s cockpit, he felt under the dash for a hidden diagnostic port and plugged the cable in. Then he opened a maintenance hatch at the front of the speeder and looked inside, finding nothing obviously amiss. Probably a waste of time, really, as Armie would have already taken all the obvious steps.

He climbed in and started the machine. He’d take it a few blocks around the neighbourhood and then onto the delimited main air corridor to see how it behaved and get some diagnostics onto the data pack. Going and seeing his dad and the team would give him the opportunity to pass the data on to one of the engineers to see what they made of it.

Things seemed normal on the residential streets, though on the broader lines it felt like the speeder was slow to get up to speed in its mid range. It was definitely lagging on the throttle in the main air corridor. An X6-BR overtook him and flashed its lights. Ben cursed mildly. He hoped again that he didn’t get recognised. He slid off the main corridor at a junction and did a barely legal turn to go back the other way. He knew there was nothing wrong with the air intake, so perhaps a fuel line was constricted. Though Armie would have looked at that.

He felt frustration creeping itchily over him. This was all a distraction and he knew it. He brought the speeder back into the garage, resisting the urge to take the final corner fast and sharp, and parked it back in Armitage’s parking space. The data pack and cable went back in his pocket.

He took the stairs back up to the apartment. He knew what he was going to have to do. He’d already mentioned it, said it out loud.

The hardest thing, though, wasn’t going to be the talk with Uncle Luke. That could be centred on the metaphysical, the hows and whys of what could have happened, the theory and spiritual essence of what went on in the place where all time met. Ben could deal with that. The hardest thing was going to be the conversation with his mother. He didn’t like being the person who brought bad news, and even less being the person who was bad news. And all the more so at this late age, when everyone had gotten so good at pretending that there was no disjunct between the person Ben had been supposed to be, and the person he was.

Leia had a lot on her plate, too, with the political situation.

He had to call Luke anyway to give him the debrief on the operation in the Gerantine space station.

 

***

 

“There is a funding network, but it’s small scale, fairly low key.”

Luke nodded on the holo stream.

“Space station workers and mining employees skimming off resources and giving them to neo-imperials, for money.”

“Did you sense any particular intentions and sympathies?”

“The locals are only in it for the credits. The person they were selling to was a real neo-Imperial. I planted a tag on her.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Kellik has the details. He owes me for this, by the way.”

“I’m sure he knows that.”

“His Navy friends will have a fun time chasing after her. Dameron’s probably already suiting up to be the dashing hero.”

“I can see you rolling your eyes from here, Ben.”

“Tell me I’m not right though.”

Luke scratched his beard. “I wonder if the New Republic would put a regular intelligence agent out there, to keep an ear on the ground. Or wherever this new target goes to. ”

Ben took his moment.

“Uncle. There’s something else.”

“Ah, I had felt as much.’

“I was invited to pay a visit to the Rospor Delt Commercial bank. Coronet city branch. Threepio called me and passed on a message.”

“Okay.”

“So I go there, and I’m shown down to the vaults by a manager. To a deposit box. This box had documents inside. Very odd documents. I need to discuss them with you.”

“Sure,” Luke said.

“It, uh, it ought to be face to face. I need you to see these things, and the story doesn’t give itself to telling without them.”

“Fine. Nindu and I are back at temple. Due to be instructing most of tomorrow, but schedules can be flexible, especially for you. Can you call by temple?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course.”

 

***

 

Going back to temple was always a little mixed. It was the place that had helped him, and the place where things could have been so much better. But of course, now, the fateful letter hinted that it was the place where things could have been so so much worse.

He would be pleased to see Master Nindu, and he would do his best not to be bitter that she was in so many ways a better Jedi than he. Even though he could do things she could not.

She was a friend. The whole lot of them who’d knocked about there as young students were all friends to a greater or lesser extent.

After agreeing to go and see his uncle, it occurred to Ben that the temple might not be the best place to take the datapad and holos — the artefacts, he suddenly thought of them as. There was clearly something very strong in the Dark Side of the Force about his other self. You could sense something of it coming from the letter and the holoclip, muted and simmering, before you even opened them and looked and saw the black cloak and the confessions of Imperial brutality and Force violence.

On the other hand, he and Luke would have to deal with it, wherever they were. And the power of the temple might actually help them.

Thinking of his dad’s invitation, he figured he could go see Luke at temple first and maybe spend some time with Han and the other pilots afterwards. It would be an effort, going from the deep and painful examination of the time travel situation, to a fun time with young pilots and beers and hijinks. But he did want to see his father. And it was nice of Han to extend the invite to Armitage, although he probably wouldn’t be coming. He’d be free at the weekend but Ben sure as hell wasn’t going to take him along to the Jedi Temple while he had the talk with Luke, and coming all the way back home just to shoot off to Monassar II’s moons seemed like hassle.

It was time to pack everything up in a bag and go.

 

***

 

It was early afternoon when Ben arrived at the Jedi temple. The pulse of the living Force through the trees called to him. Familiar presences in the Force stood out, and familiar patterns of activity.

He descended the landing ramp and brushed his hair out of his face with the back of his hand. The air was warm and slightly humid. Dense and full of memories. He loosened his outer layer.

“Hey! Right on time.”

It was Luke, calling down to him from a path above the landing site, and waving. He waved back.

“Just about to set a group up with a challenge,” Luke shouted. “I’ll be twenty minutes. Meet me by the small training ground?”

“Sure, Uncle,” he called back. “No worries.”

The bag containing all his worries hung from his shoulder. He walked up the wide path from the landing site, past rows of berry bushes and squash plants cultivated by the students, to reach the main part of the temple complex.

Over on the large training ground, Master Nindu was conducting lightsaber training, with ten young students copying her moves. Ben sensed that all were happy and proud to follow her and emulate her. He still had a little bitterness to quell, but he let it sit.

He made his way past the open sided central hall where meals were taken, towards the small training ground. As he got there, he just caught sight of a handful of older students dispersing, talking paths into the woods.

Luke made his way toward him.

“Uncle Luke.”

“Ben.” Luke hugged him warmly. “You have a story that’s hard to tell.”

“Yes. I do. I don’t know where we should begin with it. But tell me — do you sense anything from this bag, and what’s inside?”

“I sense that it’s troubling you greatly. I sense that very strongly.”

Ben nodded. “There’s something of the Dark Side about this story. And the documents that tell it.”

“Yes, I feel something of pain and regret. But it’s what we make of it that’s important. That’s where we’ll harvest the good, in the long run.”

Ben was used to Luke’s relentless hopefulness — enough that he ignored it and continued to worry. “I’m concerned about where we do this. I don’t want to have a negative effect on this place.”

“This place is stronger than you think.”

“Okay, well, we need a holoprojector, should I go back and get mine?”

“We have Artoo.”

“Uh, I don’t know if I want him to see this.”

Luke gave him an odd look. “Alright — I have a portable in one of the reading huts.”

Ben followed him to a small hut with two open roof shutters. Inside, they sat cross legged, facing each other. Ben placed the bag in between them.

“Do you want to meditate for a little?” Luke asked, gently.

“Yeah. Okay.”

They closed their eyes and breathed. Ben was aware of the Force all around him, within him, within everything in the hut and the temple complex. It knotted and tangled around the story he was going to have to tell. He let himself sit for a few minutes and feel it there, not being too tempted to dig into it and try to unravel it. He could feel Luke sensing this, being concerned by it.

He opened his eyes. “I should start now. Or I never will.”

“Alright.”

From the bag, he pulled out the envelope with the datapad, holo chips and paper. “These were left in a bank deposit box. Been there for thirty years according to records.”

Luke listened, his eyes quietly encouraging. Ben passed him the paper. “I recognise these signs, but not that one,” Luke said, pointing. “And I feel there’s something dark there.”

“You feel it?”

“Yes. Those signs and sayings together are odd, too. An odd combination. We’ll take a look in the books later.” Luke turned the paper over. _“Ben, be alone when you read this,”_ he read, concern in his voice. “Ben, this is your handwriting?”

“It is. And the deposit box was bio-locked to my hand print.”

“Hmm. _I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I hope it finds you at all._ Alright, let’s start with the datapad.” He unlocked it and began to read. His eyes widened, and after a few moments he reached for the portable holoprojector.

“Uh, you’ll find this very odd,” Ben said, inadequately warning him like he’d inadequately warned Armitage.

The image glimmered to life, and Luke watched. Ben found himself holding his breath, watching Luke’s reactions, and all the time still aching for the other version of himself.

“He’s so much in the Dark Side. You can see the despair of it,” Luke said. “And the bitterness.”

“Yes.”

“Like my father,” Luke said.

“Yes. That’s what I thought when I read the letter. He even mentions Vader.”

“Does he?”

“It’s awful. He did some awful things. I can’t — I can’t get away from them.”

“Let’s see.”

Luke carried on reading. Ben watched him shake his head and breathe back tears. It was too much — of course it was too much. He'd brought this thing here, he _was_ this thing here, and it was too much.

“Ben,” Luke said at last, and reached out to hug him.

“Uncle. It’s horrible. I couldn’t do those things. But I did. I don’t understand how.”

“You didn’t do them.”

“I know. But then, that _is_ me. It is. In some way.”

He was partly reassured. A hug was a hug, and he could sense Luke’s faith, and his wish to reassure him. It was good to know that Luke cared, but not so good to know that he clearly needed to be made to feel better.

He sat back and made the effort again to tune in and feel present in the room. Looking at the wicker panels of the walls, the tools hanging from hooks, light and shadow coming from the roof shutters. A bug marching resolutely across the floor. Focus rose out of the mass of perceptions. A direction to take.

“What’s your view on the time travel aspect,” he asked.

Luke nodded thoughtfully. “Alright. Well. What we know about time travel isn’t clear. There are theories and stories.”

“I know some of the stories. You told me some of them. What happened on Lothal, with Ezra and Ahsoka.”

“Yeah. All we know about what happened in the temple on Lothal comes from their journals, which as we found them are sadly incomplete.”

“So we don’t know this definitely _doesn’t_ fit with what happened there.”

Luke scratched his beard. “I’d need to read them again to be sure. But we know that they each went back to their own time. Very little was changed — just a moment of destiny.”

“He saved her, though, didn’t he? That’s a change.”

“But only a tiny detail. Nothing was contradicted. No paradoxes. We aren’t supposed to try to change things that way.”

“But _someone_ did. This other me did.”

“Yes.” Luke pondered. “I don’t know if it was considered inadvisable because it’s impossible and futile to try, or because it’s possible and dangerous.”

“Oh, he knew damn well it was dangerous.” Ben picked up the datapad and scrolled down. “He says, _‘I’ll never know if this has worked — if it does work, then I won’t exist. There’ll be no me, only you.’_ So he knew.”

“So he did. He was brave, then. Foolhardy, some would say. He was _you_ , alright.”

Ben sighed.

“If this is all true,” Luke said, “we aren’t only talking about future and past on a line, but multiple futures and pasts.” He gestured with his hands as he spoke, lining up futures with one hand and pasts with the other. ”Pasts with different choices made, and futures that may never come to be.”

“Another me. In another life, who did those things. And then did this. So his future never came to be. I meditate on it, and I don’t know how I feel.”

“You’ll only know how you feel–“

—“By feeling, yes, yes, I know. It doesn’t help.”

“All I can do, Ben, is take this story as a story. Take it as it is. There was a past where you turned to the Dark Side, as painful as that is to think about. You, this other you, served an evil being as his apprentice, until you rose up against him. Finally, you found an ability to open a portal to the world between worlds and time between times, and you went back to stop all of that happening. And here we are.”

“Yeah. Here we are.” Ben had expected a little more in the way of insight.

“Did you want a big answer? Did you want me to tell you what it all means? Like a wise Jedi Master?”

“No, no.” Ben shut his eyes tight for a few seconds and shook his head. “You can’t tell me what it means, I have to do the work, you’ve already shown me how to know,” he said, as if reciting from a text.

Luke shrugged. “It’s for you to do your work and for me to do my work. And there is a lot to think about, and discuss.”

“Okay. Okay. Then we discuss. That’s what I’m here for.”

Luke nodded again.

“There are other things that are bothering you,” he said. “Things that aren’t so grave as that.”

“Yes.” Ben sat in silence for a minute, resenting that he was having this drawn out of him, but at the same time wanting to spill it in whatever nonsensical order it came in. It was like reaching into a bag blindfolded and pulling out whatever object fell under your hand, with no Force to guide you.

“Alright,” he said. His hand had fallen on something and some words had fallen to his tongue. “One thing that bothers me — I want to know what _he_ thinks of all this. Kylo. The other me. But he’s gone.” He patted the datapad. “This is all we have.”

“You want to know what he thinks of _you_.”

“Yes.”

“You’re afraid.”

“No. I’m not afraid so much as… I want it all to have been worth it.”

“You’re afraid that you might have let him down. Not been enough.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Ben. Look at what he wrote. He wanted to be with Armitage. And you are. He wanted to put right the wrongs, or at least to undo everything Snoke did. He wanted to give Armitage a better past. And he did.”

“ _He_ did. He gave up the galaxy for it. I should have been someone worth giving up the galaxy for.”

“You are.”

“Don’t flatter me. I’m a part timer. You know what I was supposed to be.”

“Ben. You can’t hold on to that. Not like that.”

“No. You have Master Nindu. And she’s everything that’s needed.” _Though I’m better than her, at a lot of it_ , Ben thought.

“You know, a lot of people would think it’s pretty cool to be a racing pilot _and_ a Jedi.”

“Yeah, yeah, _okay_.” Discomfort knitted over his body and he just had to stand up and move, walk a little distance away. “Can we not go over this again. I’m supposed to be grateful. Yes. I get it.”

Luke put up his hands. “Alright. Alright.”

Ben considered for a moment. “I suppose I have to be grateful now. No choice. I am glad that I’m in this time, and not in his time. Is that enough?”

“It is. It’s the story.”

“I talked about it with Armitage, a little bit.”

Luke nodded.

“I didn’t tell him that it was me, the other me, who took him from Arkanis, though. He’s not ready to hear that. No way ready. But he’s seen both holos. I told him some of what Kylo wrote in the letter. And he was skeptical, but he accepts it. In a way, anyway. He’s glad we found each other.”

“Good. He’s not a fool.”

“I should be more — I don’t know if grateful is the word or not, but me and Armitage, it’s — I don't know. Relationships are hard.”

“So they tell me.”

Luke stood up and smoothed the front of his robe.

“I have to do a few things — do you want to go to the library and look at the texts, or you could sit up by the boyan trees.I’ll only be an hour or so.”

Ben gathered everything back into the envelope, tucked it back into his bag, and stood. “I’ll sit by the trees, and make more notes of what I need to find out.”

“You sure?” Luke nodded to himself. “Hmm. Yeah. The boyan trees are a good place to be. They helped you before.”

“They did.”

“We’ll have a deeper look into it when I’m done. I’ll try and find those old journals in the library.. Do you want to go over it line by line, and make notes? Or would that be too much?”

“Maybe we should. There’s a lot in there, though at the same time not nearly enough.”

As Luke and Ben walked together back to the middle of the temple grounds, R2-D2 trundled forward from a hut and beeped at Luke.

“Yeah, Artoo, I had to discuss something with Ben here,” Luke said, with a smile and a twinkle in his eye.

Artoo beeped and twirled.

“And hello to you, too,” Ben said.

Artoo bumped along beside him, beeping away in astromech. What had Ben been flying lately? Had he tested the new iteration of the A-wing? Was Threepio coping without Artoo to keep him on the straight and narrow?

Ben filled him in.

Three of the younger students ran up to them, satchel bags bouncing on their hips, followed by Erdash, an Iktotchi Jedi knight a couple of years older than Ben. “Ben! Ben! You’ve come to see us! Erdash! Ben is here! Master Luke didn’t tell us you were coming.”

He answered some of their chattering questions about what it was like being a star pilot and had he been on any exciting journeys and did he want to know what they’d been learning today.

Erdash caught up to them, and greeted Luke and Ben. Ben got a hug and a forehead bump, as was the Itkotchi custom for those who had been away for a while.

These kids were excited about their studies. It seemed, if not bittersweet then oddly touching; a little melancholy. Futures. Highs and lows. Disappointments.

Luke took the opportunity to go and attend to his business. Artoo trundled away with him.

“You still have an attachment to this place,” Erdash said, adjusting his robe under the curve of his horns.

“Yes, of course I do.”

“It’s good to see you whenever you come. The kids like seeing you.”

“Yeah. I guess they do.”

Ben glanced again at the children’s satchel bags, all stuffed full.

“Oh! The weekend shuttle is coming, right? Do you need me to move my ship? I can land up at the top clearing.”

“If you could,” Erdash said. “There’s probably plenty enough room but the pilot might fuss about not having a clear landing patch. Thanks, Ben.”

“Have a good weekend with your families, guys.”

They children chorused their goodbyes as Ben ran back down to the landing area and jumped into his ship. Looking out of the window, he could see one of the kids stealthily picking a summer squash from one of the big sprawling plants. The child probably thought he was being very clever and naughty, but in truth Erdash was both observant and happy to have the vegetable glut reduced. Perhaps a parent or grandparent was going to be gifted a vegetable from the real actual Jedi temple. They might eat it in a pie, or would they slice it and pickle it and claim mystical healing powers for it? Idiots.

He overrode all the warnings that told him not to take off with the rear door open, and brought the ship gently up on its repulsorlifts. He took it, on steering thrusters only, the few hundred metres to an earth clearing behind the temple complex.

He walked back on a wide path through the trees and ferns, to the grove of boyan trees. It was quiet, and there was a very light breath of breeze, unlike at the bottom of the hill.

He sat at the base of one of the trees, his long legs tucked beneath him. The Force flowed between the trees, in the air and underground. He breathed deeply, but he did not try to meditate.

Here he was, back at school, having polite chats with old colleagues and seeing the new kids who were coming up and following in his footsteps. It wasn’t just that his footsteps had faltered and he wasn’t quite the Jedi he was supposed to be. Nor was it that he felt everyone should all actually be expressing more disappointment in him, as though they weren’t bringing themselves to admit that he was a part-timer, that he wasn’t the great chosen one any more. That they didn’t know him.

It wasn’t just that. It was the other past. The other version of him had been to school here, probably with most of the same colleagues and friends. And something terrible had happened here, in the other past. So nothing terrible had happened here. But it had. It had. _That night at his temple. It can’t happen this time._ It had involved the people here. _Maybe they’re okay. Maybe they all are._ The letter said that Luke had turned on him, somehow. There had been a fight of some sort, he was sure. The others were involved. And they would have put up a fight. Would they all have been killed? That was cowardly phrasing — he meant, would _he_ have killed them all?

His lightsaber felt uncomfortable at his belt.

It would have happened a few years ago, so some of these younger students might not have been here yet. But the others. They would have been here. _Maybe they’re okay. Maybe they all are._ Perhaps some of them had survived, in the other reality. Which would have made them Kylo’s allies.

If Kylo had allies here, then that meant that some of Ben’s friends and colleagues would have been with him and some would have been against him. He would have slain some, and some would have gone with him to join the new Empire. The temptation to consider which was there, and he felt he ought to resist it.

Nindu wouldn’t have gone with him. Erdash, neither. Kellik might. Sandor might have gone with him.

Under another tree, that one there, the one with the U-shaped hollow at its base, was where he and Sandor had kissed, before later deciding not to be boyfriends. Would that have still happened?

So. He’d have duelled Nindu and it would have been difficult, but he’d have won. Fear and rage would have carried him through and then the braver of her students might have tried to avenge their master. Would he have had to kill them too? Just in case? Would he have been acting under orders? The strong, clever Zabrak girl twins— they were here five years ago. Would he have cut them down?

Would he have been afraid?

Would Sandor have been afraid?

Did Snoke speak to the others or only to him?

He had struggled with the Dark Side, and where it and the Light belonged in him. He remembered sitting under these trees and trying to think things through and weigh them up. Luke had given him time.

It would have been very different, with someone telling him easy lies, and tempting him down the path of darkness. But he had given in. His thoughts of the day before ran through his mind again. He had thought that he’d never let himself be used like the Emperor had used Darth Vader. But of course he had.

He got out his own datapad and stylus, and started to make notes.

 

***

 

From his vantage point, he could see Luke walking back, and heading to the library hut. He got up, brushed leaf litter from his pants, and went to join him.

 

***

 

“Okay, we’ll go through this thing again, with my notes.” Ben brought up the letter on the strange datapad, and his notes on his own. “We know Kylo was apprentice to Snoke, but we don’t really know anything about who he was. Where he came from. What he even was.”

“No. And little way of finding out.”

“All the letter says is this. ' _Out in the Unknown regions, there may be more like him. I don’t have time to find out. Please be careful'._ ” He didn’t read the next part out loud. _(Armitage always tells me to be careful. He’s fussy. Is yours like that? I hope he is.)_

“So we _don’t_ know,” Luke said. “If there are more like him, we don’t want them joining with the Imperial remnants and we certainly don’t want them happening upon a portal to the world between worlds and time between times. Back then, the Emperor wanted power over it, according to Ezra’s journal, and damned near got it.”

“I’m going to have to read that section of those journals.”

“You are.” Luke went to a shelf and pulled out a leather folder. Inside were two data cards and a bunch of flimsi sheets fastened together with a clip. He sorted through them, muttering to himself. “There’s not much here, but I think this is the part you want.” He handed over a selection of flimsis and one of the cards.

Ben read through one of the documents. “The Emperor found them in there, and tried to trap them. And he got in through his own Sith magic.”

“Yep. Though I don’t think he entered the place himself. Ahsoka writes that she and Ezra ran from his blue flames. The Emperor himself didn’t get in.” Luke fussed around the shelves. “There’s a section on Sith magic in one of these books, but I don’t know how much help that would be.”

“Kylo writes in the letter, _‘There are abilities that I didn’t know about — to open a portal. You probably don’t know them. Or maybe you do.’_ Which suggests it’s something he learned recently. Could be Sith, could be something he discovered.”

“There’s a section of Ezra’s journal on that data card,” Luke said, and passed Ben a card reader.

Ben clicked the data card into place.

“Hmm. The Emperor wanted something in the temple, and there was a lot of activity going on.” He scrolled forward. “Invoking the gods of Mortis… hmm, I suppose.” He read further on again. “Huh. So it’s like you say. Ezra wanted to change the past and Ahsoka didn’t let him. Which doesn’t tell us it’s impossible, only that she thought it unwise. And he closed the portal after he left.”

“Do you think Kylo closed his portal after he used it?”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t see how he can have done,” he said, narrowing an eye in thought. “It seems to me that the instant he killed Snoke, when I was just a baby, then he never came to be. I never grew up to be him, so he never existed. He can’t have gone back in and out through his own portal to close it.”

“We need to raise this with Council.”

Ben frowned.

“I know, I know. And I say ‘council’ when it’s only me and Nindu and Kellik, and you’d be invited of course. But we have to at least talk about upping our monitoring out in the far West. We don’t have to go into the full details.”

“Okay.”

“You will have to talk to your mom.”

“I know. I’d rather not.”

“We have to talk to her because she is who she is. Not just because she’s your mom or because she’s in the government. I mean, both of those things, obviously both of those things, but because she’s one of us.”

“She won’t understand. It’s just gonna be me. Again.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know how. Me. Causing big fucking problems.”

“It’s not like that.”

Ben gave him a hollow laugh. “Maybe the neo-Imperial stuff can make this one into a real problem, an actual crisis. Then she’ll thrive on it.”

“Ben. You’re probably being unfair.”

“Yeah yeah.”

Luke sighed, waited a moment, and nudged the datapad with his mechanical hand.

“Okay, so, the next part?”

“He had power, the other me, but he seems dissatisfied. It says, _'We had a lot of success, but it isn’t what it was supposed to be'_ , but no sign of what he thinks it was supposed to be.”

“Perhaps it didn’t make him happy. I don’t think it made my father happy.”

“And if he had defeated the Emperor and ruled in his place?”

Luke shook his head. “I don’t think he’d have been happy. Maybe not even if I’d ruled with him.”

Ben read the next section.

_“I always hated Armitage Hux, for the longest time. And he loathed me, I know it. Then we became close somehow and I’ve never needed or loved anyone so much._

_“Snoke made us into bitter rivals. He played us off against each other, the apprentice against the ambitious general, and we knew he was doing it, but we were fools. And he lied. He lied about me to Armitage, and he lied to me.”_

“He must have feared that they’d conspire against him, if left to their own devices.”

“Well, it worked, because they didn’t team up against him.”

“Would you rather have heard that they had?”

“Yes! Absolutely!” Ben shook his head. “Look what happened. He didn’t bow to me and I hurt him. It says so right here.”

“Vader used to do that to officers who displeased him.”

“But this was _Armitage_.” Ben’s head dropped and he contemplated his belt fastening. “I haven’t told him this part.”

“I can see why.”

“But, no — shit, the holo. He, Kylo, he says it there, and Armie watched that.”

“Right.”

“He didn’t say anything about it. And I don’t want to talk to him about it. I feel like, he knows and he’s going to ask and then what? He’s going to leave?”

“We don’t know that. We do know that the other you — they were able to have a relationship after that, according to this.”

“That’s what seems to have made him want to change things. But something was still wrong. It had to have been. Or he wouldn’t have done all this.”

“All regrets and pain,” Luke said with a sigh. “This is a parallel to Vader, too, this girl he wanted to rule with him.”

“The scavenger girl. Whoever she was. She must have had a lightsaber, to give him that kind of wound. I don’t think an electroblade would scar like that. And she must have been strong with the Force for him to ask her to join him.”

“I don’t have any girl students with a scavenger background. Only one boy. Maybe she’s out there, her powers still latent. We might find her one day.”

“There’s no way of knowing who she is or where she’s from. That’s what’s so maddening about it.”

“You don’t always give the most detail in your communications.”

“I do. When the detail’s needed. Ask Dad and any of my engineers.”

“You said you didn’t tell Armitage that it was Kylo who took him from Arkanis. Do you think his mother remembers anything?”

“No. She’s never reacted strangely to me. If she did recognise me, she’s doing a damn good job of hiding it.”

“He probably used a mind trick, or did something to her memory. There are dark side methods of getting into a person’s mind and interfering with things.” Luke pondered. “They had a droid with them, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. A class 3 clerical and admin.”

“ I wonder if he wiped its memory. I bet Lando would be able to tell if he had.”

“You think I want to bring Uncle Lando into this?”

“Yeah, sorry. That was me getting side tracked. Alright. Bring some Jedi focus to the table.”

“You know what comes next. The part about this place. This is the part I’ve been thinking about a lot, being back here.”

“Yes. This isn’t easy. “ Luke read from the letter, _“I think perhaps he influenced my uncle, too, to turn against me. Things are okay with you and your uncle Luke?_

_“That night at his temple. It can’t happen this time. It’s the only thing I’m worried about, but if you have this letter then even if it happened you’re okay. Maybe they’re okay. Maybe they all are. It could have gone another way and not have needed to happen.”_

“I keep thinking about what would have happened, and I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I,” Luke said. “He says that Snoke influenced me too. I don’t know.”

“But something happened. You turned against me.”

“Or he thought you did. I don’t know, Ben. I don’t think I would have been tempted by the dark side into… I don’t know what. But maybe that’s wishful thinking.”

“I think there was a fight. I think —“ he took a breath — “some people were killed. I think I killed them.”

 _“Maybe they’re okay. Maybe they all are.”_ Luke looked at Ben with obvious concern and compassion. “This seems to suggest he regrets it.”

Ben breathed in, then out, and spoke quietly. “I think he had help. Maybe he overpowered you and then fought his way out, but I think he had help. I don’t think I could have taken Nindu and Erdash and Bel and Kellik and everyone else.”

Luke nodded sadly.

“One at a time, yes, I think I maybe could. But not together.”

Luke gave him a wordless look.

“Sorry.”

“Perhaps this Snoke influenced some of the others, too. Or maybe I did. But I’m not…”

“People like you more than you think. They listen to you.“

Ben furrowed his brow, at the datapad, at Luke, at everything. There had been circular discussions about leadership, and examples given, but he had never thought he was going to be that sort of Jedi.

“And, you know, he signs the letter Kylo Ren,” he said. “What do we think about that?”

“It could mean anything. Could be an homage to the old Order of Ren.”

“So if I did have help, or co-conspirators, as an ensemble they might have become a new Order of Ren?”

“It’s possible. We can’t know for sure, and I don’t know how much good speculation will do us.”

Ben sighed.

“It’s troubling you a lot.”

“Of course it is! I’m looking at people and not knowing if I killed them or or if I turned them to the Dark side.”

“You didn’t kill any of them.”

“But it happened. It happened somehow.”

“We’ll read up on the Order of Ren — there’s something in one of these texts, I’m sure.”

“I’ll take a look.”

“I should give you some pointers for those symbols on that paper, too. The best place I can think of to look is the Five Books Of Mortis — there’s a lot in there that you don’t tend to see anywhere else. But really I’m just guessing. The Force guides me, but, you know.”

Ben tightly gripped the datapad containing his own notes, then put it down. “Then there’s the part I really couldn’t deal with.”

“Han,” Luke said, his face pained.

“I _couldn’t do that_. I read it, in my ship, sat on the ceramacrete at Coronet City port, and I almost opened a line and called Dad there and then, but I would just have been crying down the line at him and begging him to tell me he was okay and I just couldn’t.”

Luke nodded slowly

“I called him this morning. He’s fine. I felt a little better for it.”

“When it says Snoke presented it as a test, I assume Snoke doubted your, Kylo’s, attachment and loyalty to the Dark Side.”

“Something like the Jedi trials, but for the Dark Side.”

“Only valuing obedience. And cutting you off from what you loved.”

“I thought I knew what the Dark Side was like. Moments of anger. Feeling yourself come unlatched. But this was deliberate. And I don’t think he even wanted to do it.”

“No,” Luke said, sadly. “I don’t think he did.”

“If he’d killed _Snoke_ instead, instead of afterwards. He could have done things differently then.” Ben felt tears in his eyes again. “I feel terrible for him. And everyone else. I want to save everything. I wish he could see.” He sobbed once, sniffed, and wiped his eye with the back of his hand. “I wish he could see how things turned out.”

It was in the letter. Kylo had known he would never see how things turned out.

_I’ll never know if this has worked — if it does work, then I won’t exist. There’ll be no me, only you._

“There’s all this about you dying so he could live and vice versa, but I think _this_ is the most important part,” Luke said. He read out the very last part of the letter, measuring his words. _“My mother always spoke of hope as if it was this magical thing that was enough for people. Snoke always spoke of it as a vile perversion, an idiocy, a disease._

_“I know what hope is now. I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I hope it finds you at all.”_

Ben nodded, and blinked.

“You’ve got to talk to Leia.”

“I know. I know.”

“And not for nothing, Ben, those are beautiful words. It tells me that there was still something of the good of you in him. He did something brave and foolish and put everything right. There is always hope.”

Ben wiped his eyes again, with his sleeve. “Mom does always say that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make a heap of references in here to an episode of SW Rebels that I've never actually seen.  
> I also acknowledge that what goes on in this fic Is Not How Time Travel Works In Star Wars Apparently.
> 
> Hopefully I won't take a damn month to update next time.  
> Later chapters will be thankfully a *little* lighter on exposition.  
> Thank you for your patience!  
> (5 Aug: Made a small edit to clarify that the household droid isn’t the one from Arkanis)  
> (7 Aug: another edit to correct another potentially misleading choice of language and to scratch a line that did not belong)


End file.
